The Census – Where Citizens and Illegal Aliens Collide

If voting is a right of citizenship, why should non-citizens expect representation?

House Republicans have pushed a bill through that aims to add a citizenship question to the next census in 2030. The plan is to ask people if they’re citizens, legal non-citizen residents, or illegal immigrants, then only count the citizens when setting congressional districts. But Democrats are solidly against it, calling it everything from unfair and racist to overly expensive.

Apportionment by the Numbers

The current number of representatives in the US House is set at 435, where it has been since 1929. This is split among the 50 states relative to state populations. This total would only change if Congress passed a law to increase or decrease the overall size of the House. The distribution, however, can change every ten years after the census, when the new national population count shows…